Tensions have mounted since the Vancouver-based company threatened to pull out of Greece – effectively dismantling the country’s biggest foreign investment – because of endless delays in procuring permits.

George Burns, Eldorado’s chief executive, announced that operations would be halted on Monday only hours after prime minister Alexis Tsipras said his leftist-led government would do everything it could to welcome foreign investment. Under his personal stewardship, he said, a task-force dedicated to “Grinvestment” would replace fears of Grexit.

Around 2,000 people are employed by Eldorado which says its Skouries and Olympias projects in northern Greece have the potential to make Greece a leading European gold producer. Environmental concerns have prompted violent protests in what has become a test case of the government’s resolve to attract foreign investors.

And in the last few minutes, the government appears to have caved in and said it will be issuing licenses for Eldorado to press ahead with investments in northern Greece.

The energy minister Giorgos Stathakis said necessary paperwork “will be concluded in the coming days, today and tomorrow. Three permits will be issues ... allowing Olympias to be fully operational.”

The Social Market Foundation thinktank has calculated that the average worker is £309 per year worse off than a year ago, due to the drop in real wages.

SMF chief economist Scott Corfe points out that private and public sector workers are suffering alike.

“After adjusting for inflation, workers are significantly worse off than they were a year ago. In part this reflects the increase in the cost of living as a weak currency has pushed up the price of imported goods.

“But it also reflects weak earnings growth which remains stubbornly stuck in the doldrums. Improving productivity to boost pay is absolutely critical.”

“With total pay growth lower in the private sector than the public sector in July, the government will be under more pressure to boost the pay of all workers in the economy. Lifting the public sector pay cap benefits less than a fifth of the workforce.

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Alistair Darling: We lost control with Northern Rock

Jill Treanor

Elsewhere, former chancellor Lord Alastair Darling has been reliving the Run on Northern Rock 10 years ago this week.

My colleague Jill Treanor reports:

The Resolution Foundation has held a conference “between a rock and a hard place: 10 years on from the Northern Rock” with the chancellor of the time Alistair Darling and the new chair of the Treasury select committee Nicky Morgan.

Darling has admitted that the government “lost control” for several days this time 10 years ago when customers started queuing up around branches of the Newcastle-based lender.

He also says the impact is being felt even now, arguing that:

I don’t think Brexit would have happened if it hadn’t been for the political and economic events of the preceding 10 years. people were disillusioned. they felt badly treated, they felt squeezed.

The policies that were embarked upon by governments – not just in the UK – afterwards of austerity are also to blame.

“Trump would never have been elected,” he added.

And the continuation of electronic money – quantitative easing – is also a problem. It was “never intended to be the economic weapon of choice”

Morgan, in her first public appearance since being elected to chair the select committee, has said that when canvassing on doorsteps she felt the public wondered how money had been found to bailt out banks but not for other things.

She had indicated that the select committee intends to take more evidence from the financial policy committee at the Bank of England – set up to look for the next problem in the system – and champion the cause of consumers. Some small business customer she said were still avoiding dealing with banks because of the way they had been treated.

Asked about whether bankers should be punished, Darling said that:

“It’s very difficult to criminalise bad judgements”.

In pictures: Northern Rock

Dr John Philpott, director of The Jobs Economist, says you can see a “Brexit effect” in the UK’s labour market:

The more competitive exchange rate has given a boost to manufacturing jobs, up 34,000 in the second quarter, but there are signs of weakness in the real estate sector where the number of jobs fell by 34,000. The consequences of the real wage squeeze for consumer spending may also be putting pressure on the arts, entertainment and recreation sector, which shed 30,000 jobs in the quarter.

This kind of mirror image effect could be an early pointer to a post Brexit future of winners and losers in the UK job market.’

Also, of course, the plunge in the pound after the Brexit vote is the main reason inflation has risen sharply to 2.9%.

The Bank of England predicts wage growth will rise to 3% next year, while inflation falls back towards the 2% target. The first part of that equation looks optimistic to me.

The only sustainable driver of real wage growth is increasing productivity – and in this respect the UK continues to lag behind its developed-world counterparts, notably the US and Germany. Unless a solution to this productivity puzzle is found, a meaningful improvement in living standards could be some way off.

Professor Geraint Johnes, Director of Research at the Work Foundation at Lancaster University, can see the rise of the ‘gig’ economy in today’s jobs report.

He says:

There have been particularly large gains in accommodation and food services (consistent with the boost to domestic tourism provided by the weak pound) and also in information and communication services.

Employment in real estate activities and in professional, scientific and technical services has declined over the quarter.

He also fears that UK wage growth will remain elusive:

Indeed the rapid rise in employment suggests that productivity growth remains hard to come by, and this will continue to put limits on pay growth.

Jeremy Cook, chief economist at currency firm WorldFirst, says we shouldn’t celebrate the fall in the UK unemployment rate to a 42-year low.

“There are more people in work than there have been for over 40 years, yet those people are only getting poorer due to wages that can’t keep up with inflation. Pay increases are simply not coming for a multitude of reasons.

Low productivity, Brexit fears over the future of individual sectors’ trade relationships and margins cut by higher import costs have all been referenced by companies large and small so far in 2017.

This is now the nature of the UK business landscape: multi-decade lows in joblessness are not something to celebrated.